The Press Tuesday, July 9, 1929. Foreign Policy.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19666, 9 July 1929, Page 10

The Press Tuesday, July 9, 1929. Foreign Policy.

! It is not true yet, but it soon will be j true, that the test of Britain's foreign ! policy will be the degree of friendli- ' ness established and maintained with America. In the meantime what really matters is that foreign policy should remain above the battle of Parties, and the position in this respect is encouraging. We print a cable message this morning which shows that the Labour Government is taking exactly the same steps to maintain contact with the Dominions as would have been taken by the Conservatives or the Liberals if they had been in power, and it was made equally clear in the much longer messages printed yesterday that the difference between Mr Henderson and Sir Austen Chamberlain at the Foreign Office begins and ends with their attitude to Russia. Even then it is not a very big difference. The Labour Party has decided to resume diplomatic relations at once. The Conservative Party was going to resume them as soon as it had satisfied itself that resumption was safe. In each case there was to be consultation first with the Dominions, and as that is taking place now, the position in a few months would probably have been the same whichever Party had been in power. For it will be remembered that although the Conservatives had not taken any diplomatic steps, they were quite willing to have a delegation visit Moscow to arrange if possible for the resumption of full trading relations. And with regard to the other big European problem, our relations with France and Germany, it is quite certain that there has long since ceased to be any desire in Britain in any Party for a continued occupation of the Rhineland. Britain has gone a long way to meet the anxieties and fears of Belgium and France, but her own desire has long been to withdraw from a position which she has felt has no further sanction in military or economic necessity and is not therefore in the interests of Europe or of the world. So long as the Labour Party adheres to its promise that it will not tolerate hostile propaganda from Russia, and takes no serious step in any other direction without consulting the Dominions, its foreign policy will cause no anxiety. There is of course one aspect of foreign policy which does give anxiety, but it is scarcely an anxiety of Party. Statesmen, unless they are of the front rank, are apt to forget that machinery is of very little use, whether it takes the form of a World Court or of a Peace Pact, if the nations are not ready for it. The whole aim of the foreign policy of our Empire is to maintain peace, as everybody agrees, and everybody desires. But it does not occur to everybody that peace implies not merely security but a feeling of security, and that it may do more harm than good to enter into international agreements which leave that feeling of security still to be created. It was well said by someone recently that the average man walks about unarmed, not because he is forbidden to carry arms, but because he is convinced that arms are unnecessary. No man values the law as much as he values his own life, and no law would prevent him from arming himself if he thought that without arms he would be unsafe. It is equally true that no nation will disarm while it feels unsafe, and that no international treaty therefore will be of much use unless the signatories to it feel that it gives them the security in fact which it offers them theoretically. This is not a reason why the foreign policy of the Labour Government should inspire less confidence than the foreign policy of the Conservatives or the Liberals. It is a reason why no one should expect undue haste from any Party, and why the Labour Party's caution can be accepted as a better sign than almost any other that it is aware of its tremendous j responsibility.